White House meets with activists calling for gender equity in My Brother’s Keeper

Article here. Excerpt:

'Top White House officials had an hour-long meeting with a group of scholars and activists calling for the inclusion of girls of color in President Obama’s signature racial justice program known as My Brother’s Keeper. The meeting included the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has championed MBK, and top activists and academics who signed a letter criticizing the initiative for focusing on boys and young men of color without a corollary for girls of color.
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Announced in February, MBK is a $200 million dollar public-private partnership, that will direct resources and attention to boys of color, who statistically have high incarceration and drop-out rates.  The White House released a 60-page task force detailing some of the barriers and difficulties young men of color often face. Obama first announced his intention to address the social problems of young men of color in the wake of the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case, which sparked anger among many, particularly African Americans.'

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Comments

1. At a time when boys are in the most trouble educationally and employability since the Great Depression, the president is focusing educational improvement efforts for boys based not on economic class/background, but that plus... skin color. Hardly "progress", if the goal includes a "color-blind society".

2. With girls, though doing better at school generally than boys, heading into the same lousy job market with or without college degrees, the program restricts membership to African-American boys only.

The program should be open to kids under the same conditions as now, minus the need to check the "African-American" and "Male" boxes on the application. Adding girls to it is fine so long as they don't have to have black skin to qualify. Same with boys.

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I agree with you, Matt. Now, if only gynocentric policies were as quick to be criticized for not being inclusive. . . When is anyone going to take him to task for Obamacare not providing birth control options to men, nor many of the male equivalents of the coverage that women get with it?

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